Margaret the First

This uniquely beautiful novel revives an unusually fascinating woman who has been all but lost to history. Margaret Cavendish (aka "Mad Madge") was a seventeenth-century duchess who weathered the English Civil War in exile; published (in spite of being female in the 1600s) poetry, philosophy, feminist plays, and science fiction; was the first woman ever invited to a scientific meeting of the Royal Society of London (they didn't invite another for 200 years); and generally earned both fame and infamy as a shy yet boldly unconventional member of the aristocracy.